ARTIFACT: Part Two Of A Series

If you remember yesterday's post, you and I were digging a small pond when we stumbled upon a layer of clay embedded with some marine fossils.

I believe I left you hanging just after a small cave-in that covered the fossil flecked clay deposit.

In today's installment, we begin just after I cleaned off the sand from the cave in.

To quote the flipflop prophet, "Here's where it gets bizarre."

Remember, watch the videos in the order in which they appear if you want this to make any sense.

Video 6

Video 7



Video 8

Video 9

Video 10

Pretty cool huh?

This is why the pig pen is still half demolished and the tomato starts have not been transplanted.

The final installment is in tomorrow's post, which just happens to be my 2010th post I believe.

ARTIFACT: Part One Of A Series

Last weekend, fired up by the sheer aquacoolness of my freshwater prawn operation in the classroom, I began excavating a small aquaculture raceway in my backyard.

I WANNA GROW SHRIMP OF MY OWN!

... and dang it, I'm going to do just that.



The exact dimensions of this pond are nebulous at this time, but I have a figure in my head ... it's just so crowded in there, I haven't found them yet.

Anyway ...

I was antsy to start moving sand, so I grabbed my shovel and got busy. Even with fuzzy final dimensions, I know about what I need to do, and I can fine tune the excavation when it's time.

Here at PFHQ, I have a layer of clay beneath the sand, but I will still have to line this pond to prevent seepage through the sandy sidewalls.



It is that liner and it's cost that will ultimately determine the size of this raceway pond.



As is my way, I started taking photos of the process to share with y'all.



Suddenly, inspiration struck me like a leaping mullet in a fast boat ... (that would be me in the boat, not the mullet ... probably not a good metaphor if you have never been smacked by a flying Mugil cephalus while zipping along in a skiff ... too Floridacentric)



When I recovered from the shock of inspiration, I started videoing the process.

What follows is the first installment of a series of videos that trace the pond excavation process and reveal some of the interesting artifacts that turn up when you dig deep.

I was filming using my digital camera, so each clip represents a few moments of digging.

I tried to combine them into one long video, but:

• It was kind'a long for uploading.

• The sound did not sync with the action and I looked like a 1960's Godzilla movie actor with lip movement that does not match the words. It was too weird for me.

If you want this to make any sense, watch them in the order in which they appear below.

Tomorrow, I will post Part Two.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

Video 5

I felt like Indiana FC ... only without the cool hat.

Okay, that's enough video uploads for one post.

Part two tomorrow.

Deconstructing

Years ago, when I first built the pig pen, I wisely chose pig panels, 16 foot long semi rigid fence sections, rather than wrestling floppy field fence.
Good boy, FC.
Even as a pig newbie, I knew that a pig might dig out from under the panels, so at the time I trenched the perimeter and laid in sections of old fencing under the soil. This was tie-wired to the hog panels.

Any future Hogdini escape artist would be foiled by my cleverness I thought.
And I was right.

The only escape we ever had was a gate left poorly secured.

The last thing on my mind, eight years ago, was how hard it would be to disassemble this pen out there in future land.


Well, future land is now present land and ... yowza!
I worked most of yesterday, bolt cutting and pulling fence staples out, nipping wire ties with my linesman pliers, digging trenches, pulling on rusty underground fence ... no wonder these pigs never dug out!!!


Apparently back then, I tossed any escape obstacle I could find into the perimeter trench. So far the shovel has brought up old lattice scraps, concrete blocks, and miscellaneous cement chunks.

All of that labor took place beneath a beautiful wild black cherry tree that I planted from seed years ago. It's in full bloom now, unlike it's neighbor the wild hog plum tree which was a cloud of bee-filled blossoms a week ago.

The hog plum is done with showing off and is now involved in the serious business of making tiny tart fruits.

The chickadees were busy in the plum tree, but not too busy to scold me constantly as I worked.

The nest box they used last year has chew marks around the enlarged hole, so I don't think they are the occupants this year.

I need to get out there now and work off the two Dunkin Doughnuts (chocolate glazed of course) that I have consumed while writing this and sipping my coffee (straight black of course).

Just for the record, I heard the first whippoorwill of spring last week.

Some Final Things

With the baby winding up his senior year, there have been a lot of final moments this year.

Final football game.
Final basketball game.
Final homecoming dance.
Final prom ... coming up.

Final track meet ... just a few weeks away.


Here's Junior passing the baton to his pal Enrique in the 4 X 100 relay.


It's the last Suwannee River Livestock Show for us too ... which means, we have raised our last show pig!!

WHOOP! WHOOP!

You know ... there was a time in my life where if someone had said, " I predict someday, you will spend a perfectly good Friday evening shaving a pig." ... I would have responded, " Waitress, GIVE ME WHATEVER HE'S DRINKING!"

That was before I had kids.

Listen ... if you haven't had them yet, think about it!! They will change you and force you to do things you never thought you would do.

(Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!")

If you already have kids ... well, there's always adoption.

I'm just kidding.
Chill.


Okay, I know I look insane, I had just set the self-timer for the 5th time and jumped over the fence for a "shaving the pig shot".
The other photos were even worse.

You don't really shave the pig of course. The idea is to trim her fur down to show off her buffness. The swine judge at the fair will be looking for solid muscle tone, muscle size, good joints as shown by her gait, and bone structure.

The hair cut accents all of that.

It's just like when human body builders shave their chests.

The swine show is Monday and the sale is Wednesday so I'll have a few fair posts this week to keep you updated.

So, I have loaded my final fair pig on to a trailer. It's been a long ride with daughter Katie starting the whole thing years ago as the first FFA DNAling of mine.

Each pig has had it's challenges, most had at least one episode of sickness that required either antibiotic injections or spending all night nursing it with baby electrolyte solution ... or both.

This pig was the healthiest of all ... almost too healthy. She weighed 260 pounds two weeks ago and we were afraid she would be over the weight limit (290) for the fair.

She had been on reduced rations for the last week or so and it paid off. She checked into the fair at a very buff 280 pounds today.

Sweet!

Pigs are fascinating animals, but I'm glad to be done with the fair experience now.

Well, almost done ... just a few more days.


The most amazing news today is that my baby girl, Emma is 21 years old today ... a fact that makes me a bit misty, until I think about what a funny, bright, beautiful woman she has become and then the mist clears a bit.

Just a bit.

Stupid mist.

Okay, I gotta switch subjects, when my contacts get this moist, the screen blurs.


It's a gorgeous day out there and I have an ex-pig pen to convert into a garden so let me go busy myself with the next chapter.

Mosaic Gator

Essence Gator

I probably oversold this gator photo yesterday with my "favorite gator shot" tease.

I have posted more dramatic gator shots, closer gator shots, and more gatorattitude shots in the past, but this one just speaks to me.

Maybe it's the fact that it was a gift ... I was driving out of the swamp at a fair clip, with a few hours of photography behind me ... my brain was already going over a grocery list ... I was done.

And then, there he was perched like a parrot.

I slid to a stop and backed up, knowing he would slip into the water just as I got opposite of him, but he didn't!

I shot from the JEEP window as clouds blew by changing the light conditions about every 8 seconds ... sunny, shady, sunny, shady, ad infinitum.


I think it's my favorite for it's essence, not it's technical quality.
In fact, it's just a little soft when enlarged.

I don't care... much.



The reflective dark water, the cypress knees, the buttressed cypress trunk ... and of course the perching gator combine in a way that is just right ... to me.



Florida has too many diverse habitats for any one picture to accurately capture her essence, but for me, this gator on his logfty (heehee) perch does a sweet job of representing the freshwater side of Pure Florida.


I know, I know ... it would have been more representative if he was munching a roseatte spoonbill as a 5 foot long sturgeon jumped next to a surfacing manatee ... I know ... but we take what we can get.




And here is what happens when you push your luck and try for some video, but forget that you left the keys in the JEEP ignition as you try to quietly slip out for a close up ...

Turtle Number Two

Also basking in the road was this little turtle.

(see previous snapper post)


Look Ma!
No leeches!



This appears to be a musk turtle, aka stinkpot, but the little Chelonian never did poke his parts out for me to see.
So I'm open to ID suggestions.

The turtle was shy, but he wasn't the only one.

This alligator wouldn't even look at me.

That's okay, because a few minutes after taking this shot, I stumbled into what might be my favorite gator shot ... ever.

Common Snapper

This youngster was crossing a limerock road last week just as I came around the bend.


This is the sharp end of a common snapping turtle ... best to avoid it with your digitation or any other dangly parts that you value.

If you are going to move a snapper off the road, finger placement is important, although it's a lot simpler than grabbing a live blue crab.

Snappers don't have much of a plastron. I guess they can forgo a little armor due to their normal snappiness. This one was pretty mellow and never snapped or did anything defensive.

See the hitchhiker in that photo above?

How about now?

That earthworm cousin attached to the snapper is a leech.

Man, leeches SUCK!

(hee hee)

Actually, leeches suck from both ends, but only one end sucks blood.

The posterior end just sucks for holding on.

The anterior end is the business end where a mouth that secretes an anticoagulant rasps into the skin and feeds.

It's extremely common to find leeches on turtles in Florida. In fact, it's so common, that if I had to go collect a bunch of leeches, I would start flipping turtles.

This snapper was probably just basking, since it was a chilly, but beautifully sunny day.

I'm sure he wanted to continue basking, but there would be other vehicles on this road on such a pretty weekend day, so I fiddled with mother nature by slipping him off the road and back into the water.

And then I proceeded on to my next turtle encounter ...

Bear, The Water Quality Technician

Saturday,I had to travel to school to pick up the livestock scale so we could weigh Junior's pig. The fair is coming up next weekend and his pig is the biggest we have raised ... which is good unless she is TOO big by Saturday.
She can't be more than 280 pounds next Saturday or she will be disqualified from the fair.
More on that in a later post this week.

Bear loves to ride in the JEEP, (who wouldn't?) so I took him along.

Since we had to go to school anyway to get the scale, I decided to stop by my classroom to feed the freshwater prawns.

Bear went with me of course.



Here's Bear performing a water quality test on the recirculating shrimp farm system.

He pronounced it "delicious".



The shrimp seemed startled by the appearance of Bear's testing equipment, but no permanent harm was done.



Water quality testing is hard work, so Bear took a little break while I fed the shrimp.

On the ride home, he shared his ideas for improving the filtration, and of course he was right as usual.

I count myself lucky to have an aquacultural consultant who works for dog biscuits.

Weekend Update: Emma's New Wheels

This was a big weekend for Emma.

She spent last week researching cars on line and found this barely used Kia Spectra for a sweet deal.

Yesterday, I cruised down to Tampa to check it out and finished the day as cosigner on her first car loan.

She was just a little excited.

Macrobrachium rosenbergii Goes To School

Remember last summer when I spent a week down at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI) and every post from Fort Pierce sounded something like this, "I HAVE DIED AND GONE TO AQUACULTURE HEAVEN!!"

At the time, my students and I had assembled a very simple recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) using a 300 gallon livestock tank and some pvc. There was no budget for such nonNCLB educational experiences, so I wrote a small local grant and won $200. That almost covered the cost of the tank and pvc pipe.
My wallet covered the rest.

The money ran out just about the time the school year did, so we did not stock the tank with any fish that year.

While I was at Harbor Branch last June, picking the brains of their best and brightest, I wrote another grant and won $500 from HBOI to continue my project.
Thank you HBOI!!!

Back at school in a new year, I went through the state regulatory process for possession of restricted species, because I fully intended to grow tilapia, a fish I used to grow at home in my own backyard RAS. There was a little delay due to the inspector's busy schedule, but he did come by to make sure we were in compliance and gave me some useful advice about finding tilapia fingerlings close to home.

At some point during the Christmas break, I decided to go with giant freshwater prawns ... Macrobrachium rosenbergii. They had fascinated me for a long time and since they were not a restricted species, we would have more freedom to move them around.

So, I contacted Craig Upstrom at Aquaculture of Texas. Craig runs a Macrobrachium hatchery and he turned out to be one heck of a nice guy. He gave me lots of advice about the prawns and hand picked a nice mix of larger juveniles plus some very tiny post larvae stage prawns.

I waited until after the FCAT so the high stakes testing would not be disrupted by shrimpnicity and then made my order using my grant money from HBOI.

When I told the kids that we would finally be getting livestock for our aquaculture system they were really excited. The thing had sat there bubbling away near the classroom entrance all year and at last, something would be swimming around in there.

On the day of the delivery, I received an email that said the shrimp were aboard a Fedex truck in Gainesville that morning. I shared that with the kids and they stopped by all day between classes to see if the shrimp had arrived.

Finally, at sixth period, my planning period with no kids present, the Fedex truck pulled up to the office.
The secretary, who I had bugged about 5 times that day with "Are they here yet?", called and told me, "We have sushi!"

I was down there in a flash!

The shipping container and it's precious cargo sitting on my messy desk.


I floated the bags of baby prawns for about an hour while the temperatures evened out just like you do when you buy a tropical fish from the pet store. The L-shaped pvc pipes in the tank are airlifts that create a gentle circular current and aereate the water.
A circular current carries waste and uneaten food to the center where it can be easily siphoned out. We do that once a day.

The bucket hanging in the tank is full of bioballs and biocylinders with an airstone at the bottom to create an uplifting current. The students drilled holes in the bucket to allow water to flow in and through it.
It's a very simple biofilter and we plan to upgrade it, but for now it's where the bacteria (that would be "special store bought" bacteria) do their denitrification.


What a beauty! These shrimp have fascinating social dominance levels and they get BIG!
GOOGLE them and check that out for yourself.



Most of our shrimp (about 75) are juveniles in the 5 cm range. They arrived in great shape and seem plenty frisky and active. Craig tossed in some tiny post larvae shrimp also and they are about 1 to 1.5 cm.

The picture above shows a trio of juveniles patrolling around some food pellets. The little white crescents to the left are a few post-larvae that didn't make it in the shipping process. They were consumed by the juveniles that first night.

Prawns are territorial, so one of the things the students will be doing is building a few structures of pvc and plastic mesh to place in the tank. These crustacean condo's will increase the available surface area for the shrimp and allow them to spread out. This reduces cannibalism and increases growth rates.

I'll keep you posted on our progress as the kids and I learn the ins and outs of farming shrimp.

Tired Lizards

I'm tired ... sooooo tired.


Can I just rest here on your hand?



A little to the left ... in the warm sunshine ... yes, that feels better.



This winter was so long, too long, and too bugless ...

My ribs are showing.



Thanks for the lift. I think I'll stay here in the sun for a while and recharge my batteries.




Poor thing.


It has been a hard winter for the ectothermic clans here in Florida. The cold snaps killed marine fish by the thousands, zapped seaturtles and manatees, and basically shook things up for a few months.


Warming has begun though ... here are a few signs from last weekend that spring is finally here.

Tracking Florida Scrub Jays

Yesterday, Junior FC had a track meet in Cedar Key, so I headed West to watch him throw the shot put with those powerful arms and run around the track with those powerful legs.





For once, the meet was in the direction of home and not in some far off location. I was grateful for that, since Cedar Key is not far from PFHQ.





It was a pretty spring afternoon ... late afternoon actually, with warm sun and a barely there breeze that was just chilly enough that you were glad for the long sleeves you thought to slip on that morning.





When his events were over he still needed to stay for the duration as part of his team, so I left for awhile to seek critters. The track was only a mile or two from Cedar Key Scrub State Preserve, so I figured it was my best shot since the sun was sinking towards the Gulf of Florida.





Inside the park, a fat mockingbird posed for a pic and I wrongly assumed that would probably be as good as it gets, since most of the trail ahead was pretty shady for photography.


Just as I was talking myself out of proceeding any further, I came to a trail juncture where one trail cut to the East.





The white sand of the trail fairly glowed in the late day light as it was in line with the rays and it cut through short scrubby oaks that were punctuated by the dead skeletons of taller pines.


Hoping to find a sunning snake at least, I headed down the trail.

Up ahead I could see this.


Could those be ... nah.... maybe ... scrub jays?




When I zoomed in all the way, I could see that yes, these were scrub jays!


Sweet! But ... oh so far away.





I shot them anyway, figuring that at least I could crop them and show them to you even if they were distant and grainy.

And then ...swoop!


One of them left the lofty perch and came TO ME!





It landed ten feet away on the ground and then started flitting all around me ... down to the sand, up to the branches, back to the sand ... it was wonderful!





It would have been more wonderful if the jay would JUST HOLD STILL FOR A FREAKING SECOND OR TWO!




And then it did!





And then my phone rang.





Arrrrgghhh!
Should I ignore it?

You just can't do that when you are a parent.

What if it was Junior? What if he got hurt at the track meet ...or it was over and he needed me to pick him up?




I looked at the phone. It was Mom.


Well, ... there's no way I'm not answering an off schedule call from my Momma.


I don't care if it's a Florida Panther eating an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, I'm answering.

So I did.

After it was clear there was no emergency, I said, "Mom, I am about 6 feet away from a scrub jay ... can I call you back?"

"Oh sure, Honey, get that picture!" ... and she was gone.

Let me tell you how great it is to have parents who love what you love and understand the ephemeral nature of nature photography.


Of course, almost as soon as I slipped my phone in my pocket, this happened.

Nooooooo! Come back!



It did!

Check out the cool ankle-wear this jay is wearing.
It's the latest style among threatened ice-age relic bird populations.

Tres chic!



The jay was really interested in something in the sand. At first I thought it was grabbing ants or maybe Doug's precious tiger beetles, but later a bit of video showed it digging up an acorn.




I was forced to use flash a few times ... sorry. The light was slipping beneath the nearby Gulf way too quickly.

If you live out west, scrub jays may not be such a big deal, but here in Florida, our isolated population literally is an ice-age survivor from a time when the Gulf Coast was much drier.

(Ice age = massive drop in sea level X coastline much farther out to sea divided by less ocean weather influence = drier inland climate)

That's FCalculus in case you were wondering.

Today, Scrub Jays only survive in any sustainable numbers where we have set aside their dry, scrubby habitat as parks and preserves.

It's not enough to just protect their habitat from development, you have to manage it with controlled fire so that a towering mature shady forest does not happen over time. Scrub jays need open areas with low ... well, scrubby actually, bushes and trees.

They are a fire adapted species if there ever was one.

I did make it back to the track meet in time to pick up Junior by the way.

... Okay, I was about 5 minutes late, but he's not Mom, ... HE can wait.

I got a minute or two of Jay video also, but Blogger doesn't seem to want it right now, so stay tuned and I will find a way.

THIS JUST IN!

My Macrobrachium rosenbergii babies just arrived by FED EX!

Sweet!

I'll tell you about them tomorrow, but you can Google all you want in the meantime.

Close Enough

How can something that big, disappear so fast?

How can it take so long to get back to shore when it only took a minute to wade out there?

These are the questions my friends...

Robins,Robins, Everywhere, and N'er A Pie To Bake

Yesterday was grey and rainy here in Pure Florida.

A drab day by most accounts, but not in my woods. My trees and the ground around them were alive with birds. All the locals, plus a bunch of twittery migrants moving through.

The most impressive migrants were the hundreds of robins on the forest floor, in the garden, on the lawn. They were everywhere.

Robins like that make me think of my Aunt Florence.

My cousin n law(?) John, told me a story once about the first time my cousin Linda brought him home to meet the parents. It was dinner time and the family sat down to a specialty of Aunt Florence's ... Robin Pie.

He said it was good.

Datil Update and Playing Hooky

This week was FCAT week at school.

The FCAT is Florida's high stakes test involving about 3 days of testing in which the kids dutifully fill in little bubbles with their number two pencils.



Fail the reading, math, or language arts portions ... and you are going to be in a double period remediation (as in teach directly to the test) class next year in that topic.



or





If you are a tenth grader ... your graduation is now in jeopardy, no matter how good your GPA is. You will be retaking it next fall ... and you'd better pass.



Science is the odd child out here. Unlike the three R's FCAT tests which the kids take from every year starting as an in utero fetus, the science FCAT is only taken in 5th, 8th, and 11th grades.



And it only counts as part of the overall school grade per the state, or "Adequate Yearly Progress" under NCLB madness.



And



The kids know the science FCAT doesn't count for them individually. That means that for many of them, it's a Christmas Tree experience.



And it is the last test they take in a week of grueling tests. Guess what their motivation level is...



Yet, their science teacher's evaluation will be partially based on their performance.



It doesn't matter that you are teaching biology and the science FCAT will test them on all the other and very different fields of science, along with biology.



Picture these two high school teachers ...
It doesn't matter that the classes Jane Earth Science Teacher has are composed mostly of kids who read at a 4th grade level, while all the college bound whiz kids took Joe Physics Teacher's class.



Jane and Joe are going to be rated on how their students do.



Sound fair to you?



It's good to be Joe in that situation.



This is just one thing that makes teacher accountability and performance pay such a challenging quest. It's needed, but how do you make the playing field level so it's fair?

Teaching is too often compared to the business model and it just ain't so. It's a whole 'nother beast and it's frustrating to be held accountable for the progress of kids, whose "parents" didn't nurture them in those crucial first 5 years.
It's hard to fix that deficit.



I don't have the answer, by the way.



Ignore the teacher's unions, because they are practically communist in their quest for mediocrity and uniform treatment across the board.

Oh, and here's something you may not know ... it's incorrect to call them teacher's unions, because they are education unions with lots of non teaching members.



I once had a fun verbal battle with a union guy at our school. The "discussion" was over merit pay and increased pay for teachers who go out and hustle to get special endorsements. The union was against "some " teachers getting more pay than others ... even if they had made themselves more qualified.



I am of the "more skills, more pay" school of thought so we clashed.



He had only taught for 8 years and hadn't been in a classroom for the past 10.



Wuss.



Anyway ... sorry for the mini-rant. The point is ...it's a high stakes week in Florida schools.

By Friday, the kids are spent.

Me too.

So, I chose this Friday to use an extra day of leave I earned ... which means ... I'M OFF DUDES AND DUDETTES!




Let us talk of other things ...

The picture above shows a datil pepper just getting it's TRUE leaves. This was taken a week ago, so they are a little bigger now.



Thank you to everyone who requested datil seeds. My goal of spreading the good datil news across the world is on track. I am getting about 60% germination from the same seed mix so I hope you all get at least that. I'm going to start another round of seeds soon.



The little plant above was started back in the first week of February. They grow pretty slow until things warm up and we have been so consistently cold that these little guys haven't had much outside time.

Those of you with greenhouses or growlight setups will have faster growth.



I have some grape tomatoes, variety "Juliette Hybrid" started too. This also is a photo from last week, so they are looking friskier too.



A few weeks ago, while looking up one plant, I came across info on another ... as is the internet way.

I knew of azolla, but did not realize that it is a nitrogen fixing little wonder plant. It's being promoted across rural areas world wide as a fast growing source of nitrogen fertilizer and even animal fodder ... poultry mostly.

After I read that, I scooped up a bit, just a few plants really, and tossed them into some of my ponds. A week later they had covered the surface of the partly shady ponds.



Here's a close up of our native azolla and a single non-native cousin, salvinia ...

... the green sheep of the family.

It's been raining here for two days and it has warmed up a bit, so if y'all will excuse me now, I'm going outside to play with Bear in the puddles.